Edit 1/15/10 - Excellent contributions have been made in this thread. If you are reading this message now, I urge you read through the thread up to at least page 4 and even all the way to the last page, as you will find answers to MANY of the questions you have, or come to have, or SHOULD have.[/B] Pay special attention to the question asked by johall07 (post #33,) and the response provided by Bear in NM (post #40.) I have learned a great deal through this process. Thank you to SHOLES.INFO.

Edit 1/16/10 - The gents over at sholes.info have updated their ROM once again (and likely will continue to do so.) Please check with them directly for the latest update and feature list as well as for future updates. I will not be updating the ROM linked to in the beginning of this thread. It will continue to point to release 1.0.1 (without swype.)NOTE: IF YOU DO USE A NEWER SHOLES ROM, YOU MAY NOT GET THE EXACT RESULTS DESCRIBED IN THESE STEPS. I APOLOGIZE FOR ANY CONFUSION THIS BRINGS YOU AND I WILL LOOK INTO WRITING AN UPDATED STEP BY STEP WHEN I GET A CHANCE. ALSO NOTE THAT IF YOU MAKE IT TO STEP 36 YOU NOW HAVE SPRECOVERY WITH NANDROID SO THE WORLD OF ROMS IS OFFICIALLY NOW OPEN TO YOU.

After searching and making sense of all the instuctions available out there, I would like to offer this HOW-TO go from stock 2.0.1 >to> Sholes.info ROM. I have organized this method so there is NO NEED FOR ADB SHELL. You can potentially pull this off in an hour or less. I am not liable for anything YOU do with YOUR phone. This method assumes you know how to move files from your computer to the sdcard of your phone and can type from a command prompt on your DROID (using Android Terminal Emulator.)

Ok friends, just 62 steps to go. Please follow them closely.
EDIT! Some or all of the links to files below many no longer work. If a link is broken then it is a good chance for you to search for it and maybe come closer to the original sources of these awesome files/tools in the process, just as I did.

1. Download all the files you will need first. (You may need to search for them):update.zip - Grants super user (root) access to the phone.flash_image - Utility used for flashing recovery.img.recovery-0.99.2b.img - Thanks SirPsycoS and Sholes.info!! virginoem-backup.zip - A clean 2.0.1 ROM with root and busybox.sholes_info-1.0.1.rom.tgz - Sholes.info ROM. This is where the GOODS are. Be sure to check for ROM updates at www.sholes.info. NOTE: IF YOU DO USE A NEWER SHOLES ROM, YOU MAY NOT GET THE EXACT RESULTS DESCRIBED IN THESE STEPS. I APOLOGIZE FOR ANY CONFUSION THIS BRINGS YOU AND I WILL LOOK INTO WRITING AN UPDATED STEP BY STEP WHEN I GET A CHANCE. ALSO NOTE THAT IF YOU MAKE IT TO STEP 36 YOU NOW HAVE SPRECOVERY WITH NANDROID SO THE WORLD OF ROMS IS OFFICIALLY NOW OPEN TO YOU.

5. Hold down 'x' and then begin to hold down the power button at the same time. When the screen lights up, you can let go of the buttons. You will now be booted to a screen with an exclamation point in the middle.. Sort of like this /!\

6. Press the 'volume +' and 'camera' buttons together until you see the screen change to a menu.

7. Choose the option to 'run update.zip.' Wait for finish... This update gives you super user or 'root' access to the phones internal drive and filesystem. If you stopped here, you would simply have a 'rooted' phone.

8. Reboot phone.

9. Go to Android Market and install 'Android Terminal Emulator.'

10. If you downloaded flash_image from a differnt source than above it may have a '.zip' on the end of the file name. If this is the case, you will n eed to extract the zip file so you have 'flash_image' without '.zip.

13. Open 'Android Terminal Emulator.' (In the launcher, you will see it is simply called 'Terminal Emulator'.) You will now see a blue screen with command prompt.

14. Slide open the keyboard and type 'su' then press 'enter'. You will be prompted to press 'Allow'. Press 'Allow'.

15. Type 'mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock4 /system'. This will make the phone's internal drive writable so that we can copy files to it from the sdcard in the next step.

16. Type 'dd if=/sdcard/flash_image of=/system/bin/flash_image'. It will tell you how many bytes in/out. This copies the flash_image utility to the phones internal drive where we need it.

17. Type 'chmod 755 /system/bin/flash_image'. This changes the permissions of flash_image so that we can use it.

18. Type 'sync'.

19. This step was redundant and has been removed.

20. Type '/system/bin/flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery-0.99.2b.img'. There should be a short pause as the custom recovery image is flashed and then the command prompt will appear again. At this point, the stock recovery screen you saw in steps 6-7 has now been replaced by the one you will see in steps 29-30 and on. This recovery image was written by SirPsycoS and is shared by him at sholes.info.

21. Type 'mv /system/recovery-from-boot.p /system/recovery-from-boot.old'. This should prevent the custom recovery from being over-written on reboot. If this step doesn't work for you, skip it. I've haven't witnessed the problem that it is supposed to prevent. bernal125 skipped it without issue. For others, this step has worked without issue.

22. Type 'sync'.

23. Close 'Android Terminal Emulator.'

24. Going back on your computer, extract 'virginoem-backup.zip' so that have you have folder called 'virginoem-backup' with the contents resembling 'boot.img' 'cach.tar' 'data.tar' etc...

25. Create a folder on the root of your sdcard called 'nandroid'.

26. Copy the folder 'virginoem-backup' from your computer to the 'nandroid' folder you just created on your sdcard in step 25.

27. Copy the file 'sholes_info-1.0.1.rom.tgz' from your computer to the root of your sdcard. Make sure it is spelled 'sholes_info-1.0.1.rom.tgz'. Disconnect usb.

28. Power off the phone.

29 . Hold 'x' and power button to boot into recovery as in step 5 above. You won't get the exclamation point this time. Rather you will be booted right into the recovery.

30. READ THE RED COLORED TEXT SO THAT YOU KNOW HOW TO NAVIGATE THE MENU.

@vpshockwave Fully. Isn't it always? Also, some would combine several actions into a step there by making the 62 step procedure condensed or, COMPRESSED. What I offer perhaps is the full process EXTRACTED. Thanks for your feed back vp! =) You are certainly correct.

@vpshockwave Fully. Isn't it always? Also, some would combine several actions into a step there by making the 60 step procedure condensed or, COMPRESSED. What I offer perhaps is the full process EXTRACTED. Thanks for your feed back vp! =) You are certainly correct.

Click to expand...

Oh don't get me wrong. I wasn't dogging on your steps. It's just -- damn -- that's a lot of steps when they're laid out one by one!

i've already been messing with my phone for a while. i've done the update and tried using the roothelper in the other thread. i'm scared to brick my phone and tried resetting to factory default. is there anyway to completely format my phone so i can start over and do this?

when i cleared cache/default i still got my apps and all the info sync'd with my gmail account

I apologize if this is a noob question, but isn't flashing the virginoem-backup kind of redundant if your already on stock 2.0.1? Also don't you need busybox to run flash_image? Please enlighten.

Ooh one last thing. Could someone possibly list the features mentioned in step 53? I haven't flashed the Sholes.info rom yet (waiting for some bugs to be hammered out or a full stable release of 2.1 whichever comes first) and would like to be prepared if/when I do. Ty in advance.

I apologize if this is a noob question, but isn't flashing the virginoem-backup kind of redundant if your already on stock 2.0.1? Also don't you need busybox to run flash_image? Please enlighten.

Ooh one last thing. Could someone possibly list the features mentioned in step 53? I haven't flashed the Sholes.info rom yet (waiting for some bugs to be hammered out or a full stable release of 2.1 whichever comes first) and would like to be prepared if/when I do. Ty in advance.

Click to expand...

Installing the Sholes ROM over the virgin 2.0.1 image is a little redundant for most, but when people write guides like this, it tends to be a "better safe than sorry" type of situation. I don't believe flash_image needs busybox to run, but if you use that virginoem image, you will have busybox anyway.

I ran into a couple problems with the sholes package itself. The one linked in the instructions no longer exists. I found the most recent file on the sholes site homepage, same filename, and used that instead. With the file I downloaded, everything worked as described until steps 52-54 did not happen. The install attempted to make a backup, nandroid failed with error 34, and then it proceeds to install without any further prompting. Once rebooted, it is still vanilla android without any of the sholes features. I've tried it twice now with the same result.

I ran into a couple problems with the sholes package itself. The one linked in the instructions no longer exists. I found the most recent file on the sholes site homepage, same filename, and used that instead. With the file I downloaded, everything worked as described until steps 52-54 did not happen. The install attempted to make a backup, nandroid failed with error 34, and then it proceeds to install without any further prompting. Once rebooted, it is still vanilla android without any of the sholes features. I've tried it twice now with the same result.

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